When I got home the lights were off, which gave me hope that I could eat and maybe watch some TV in the living room by myself. At the bottom of the stairs, however, a faint movie score portended a scene I often saw but to which I had never become inured.
The living room had two couches that formed an "L" shape. Mick and Heidi sat on one, Devin and Maria sat on the other. Maria, interchangeable with Heidi, was comparably pale and skinny, with dyed hair and tiny clothes and brightly colored tattoos. All were beneath blankets, heads sticking out in the varying glow of a TV that was half mine. That made it seven consecutive nights of front-room monopoly by those no courtesy-having bums. Or was it eight. Trying to recall the exact number, I went into the kitchen to submerge the remnants of a bad meal with what I hoped could be deemed by an onlooker as an excess of hot dogs, potato buns, and baked beans.
"Did you see Mick’s new haircut?" Maria asked.
"Yeah, everywhere. Hey, did any of you see a can of--"
"Baked beans?" Mick interrupted me to ask.
"Correct. I bought a can of baked beans then put them on the kitchen counter. Yesterday."
"I saw that," Mick said. "The label was scuffed, and I wanted some fruit cocktail, so I opened it."
"And you put the contents where?"
"Well, beans aren’t exactly known as a fruit alternative, so I threw them out."
My voice, without my approval, channeled a dying flower. "But I was going to make hot dogs."
"Check the fridge. You’ll see hot dogs. I thought we were talking about beans." Mick was annoyed and, apparently, confused. Which was okay, because only one issue demanded clarity.
"Why would you open food that isn’t yours?"
Devin interjected. "Uh, Greg, how long do you need to talk while standing in the kitchen? Because we need the lights off."
After stalling for a minute to ponder how hilarious I am, I turned off the light then stared at Devin in the dark. Devin, all wrapped in a blanket. His cheekbones, all three points of his jaw, encroached on the world, jutting rudely into empty space, and his flat top hairdo never changed. That yellow straw--like rows of Braunhemden--stood at attention, ready to raze any agitator who dared a slight bend or growth spurt. Devin always had a vaguely contented expression hanging off his eyelids. Any time I saw him, the story he projected was that of a man who had recently masturbated to pictures of himself.
"I’m going for a walk," I said, as though any of them would do more than shrug if they heard about my kidnap, sexual torture, and resulting death. I considered looking at the open can of beans, but when I neared the trash bin, a crumpling sensation struck me between the eyes, so I left.
#
Tonsil stones are lumps of calcified material that form, as indicated by their name, on the tonsils. When debris--composed of food particles, dead cells, mucus, and bacteria--accumulates on the tonsil surface, in the folds thereof, it hardens over time, resulting in small, whitish lumps (or stones). Forceful, deliberate expectoration can dislodge the stones, which are then transferred (when nobody’s looking) to Devin’s jar of minced garlic."Hey yo, Prophet’s here," a guy named Smiley or Joker said when he answered the door.
That morning and afternoon had passed without a call from Ruth. Although I had resigned, briefly, to dying all shit-caked and pee-rashed by the phone, I later decided to get drunk.
"Tell that fool to come in," Mike shouted.
I walked in then saw the usual mass of compromised judgment that packed Mike’s house on weekends. Crammed into the low-lit haze were my fellow problem-evaders, the walking sets of recognizable behavior upon whom I relied to lessen my own shame. Crowding out worrisome thoughts via chemical invasion felt better as a team mission rather than a solo quest...
In the kitchen, five or six people played a card game that, based on the outcome of each hand, required them to either loudly decry happenstance or obnoxiously marvel at individual skill.
In the living room, ten or so people took turns on a two-player video game, exchanging insults and threats under a suspension of consequences that would have been instantly voided were I to hazard even a single, prototype slight.
In my head, a thousand giants flattened a cilia forest, crash-landing with somersaults and ill-fated goes at front flips.
"The sound...fucking surrounds," I commented as Mike approached.
"My cousin hooked that shit up," Mike said, reaching out so our fists could touch in a mock collision. After that, his boyish face turned serious. "And Prophet, my guy, for that pink stuff, he said his guy got fired, so the supply chain is all disrupted."
"No worries," I said, reflexively touching the scab on my arm.
"Cool. It’s like, we probably have some other shit. Come check it out."
"Alright, man."
"Make way for Prophet, y’all."
Mike pushed me from behind, using me as a human plow to part the other guests. We ended up in the basement.
"I gotta check on some stuff with the old heads, but I’ll be back, and we can laugh it up then," Mike said, patting my shoulder. As he walked off, I heard him tell Lucy to get Prophet a beer.
"Mike had to go," Lucy said, handing me a bottle.
"I know."
She feigned wariness. "I bet you knew."
"Ha," I replied.
Lucy wore too much makeup, and the red in her hair didn’t go with the black, but she was pretty and nice, and our surface-level chats had always been painless. None of her shirts covered the sub-navel part of her stomach. When she noticed me glance at that bit of pudginess peeking out from above her waistline, she pinched a small fold between her thumb and forefinger.
"Too many chips."
"What? Nah. You look good."
"Don’t lie to me, Prophet. If there’s one thing--"
Lucy stopped, leaned in closer. "You see that guy over there? The one staring at you? He’s freakin’ weird, yo."
A person I did not recognize indeed stared at me. Not only stared, but also crouched by the wall in a position of stealth and readiness incompatible with our basement merrymaking. This guy, this make-believe puma lying in wait, was pale, with a mashed-up bird's nest for hair. Below his eyes were gouged-out spaces of almost-black, and a horizontal striped t-shirt and baggy jean shorts emphasized his bony frame.
"You are a prophet as well?"
During a tilt of my beer, the stranger had teleported, stood next to me. For five seconds, I didn’t say anything. If he had asked me whether or not I was a contract killer hired by the ocean to assassinate the sky, I would have taken the same amount of time to answer.
"What are you--"
"I’ve been recently exploring that part of my psyche as well. Other parts, too, but ever since my vision-sight manifested, I am much more selective about which abilities I level up."
"That’s just a nickna--"
"What abilities do you have?"
I looked over at Lucy, who shrugged then started talking to someone else. But not before smirking at my plight.
When I didn’t answer immediately, my new friend proceeded to tell me more. "I have a keen connection with clouds. Storm clouds always reveal something. There’s a message for all humanity that I’ve been chosen to scry, and my only obstacle right now is a lack of eldritch talismans. The demons try to stop me, but my counter spells and offensive magic are too strong. I’ve destroyed...three demons this year alone."
The music was loud. I must not have heard him correctly.
"What is your name?"
"Mateo."
Mateo, you are mentally ill, I thought. Then, a revelation struck me. Replace the sections torn out by whatever chemically-centered pastime, give that guy some sleep, and you had someone from my childhood.
"Mateo."
"Yes, fellow prophet."
"I know you. I mean, I know who you are."
"Like, in a way, you’ve always known me?"
"No. We went to the same grade school. I’m Greg. Mateo, I’m Greg! We both had Miss Ruby. And I always remember...I remember this one project, you drew on a poster board all these baseball terms. Texas leaguer and--"
"Right. Baseball. Fourth grade," Mateo said, looking up and around instead of elaborating. He seemed sad that the conversation had veered off into reality. Before I could reminisce further, the delusional freak sauntered away, face angled at the ceiling, just utterly done with me.
After claiming an unguarded bottle of clear liquor, I sat down in a chair then drank my spoils over the next few hours, formalizing a list of concentration contraband. Tammy and her table manners that would offend a feral child. Those kids who walked four-wide at the mall then forced me to bump shoulders with at least one of them, thereby risking mortal combat over a less than interdimensional threat. Mick and Devin and their functioning biological systems. All of it began to fade, began to matter less than a conflict you read about taking place in Sudan or Canada or the past. I nearly thought about Ruth, but because there was no way she would be sitting somewhere thinking about me, I refused (thus preventing any power imbalance between us). Sometimes, existing in a crappy house could be a real apex of living.
And sometimes--like when a girl starts having a seizure on the floor--existing in a crappy house can be a real downer.
"Holy shit," someone said.
And there it was, a minnow's dry-land interpretive dance about earthquakes or electrocution. The severely animated part of the seizure lasted only a few seconds. Catatonic stillness, and the gradual onset of communal worry, followed. Given the circumstances, I fought noticing how cute the girl was. Fought noticing her blue eyes and black hair. And tank top. And skirt. And legs.
"Are you okay? Hey, can you hear us?"
No response. Someone shook her arm. Again, nothing.
For what seemed an inappropriate amount of time, no one said or did anything. Everyone just stared at the skinny white girl (who already seemed very corpse-like) lying on the presumably Egyptian rug. Dread began squeezing the toxins from my brain. Doom seeped into the air with every thud of bass from the stereo.
"We should call an ambulance."
"Mike said no cops, ever."
"Maybe we should do like...CPR."
Responsibility for the girl’s well-being was lowered onto me by the slow-turning of heads in my direction. I would have preferred a mace to the temple.
"Don’t worry everybody, I can handle this," someone proclaimed. I felt relieved just hearing a confident voice, to see the crowd clearing for a person who might actually improve the situation.
In walked Mateo, and for some reason he carried the decorative sword that normally hung on the wall in Mike’s kitchen.
We switched your medicine with AIDS-blood caplets. That’s not anti-venom, it’s more venom.
That animal doctor is really a shape-shifting wolf.
She needed help...and she got Mateo, weaponized.
He knelt at the top of her head. "An evil presence involuntarily showed itself because it sensed my abilities. This demon begs to be killed, to be spared the pain of seeing its brethren destroyed by me, The Empyrean Purge, The Angelic Spear. The Divine Prophet Noble-Sword."
Was he referencing a demon inside her, or a demon...her? And why did he have a sword? And why did everyone just silently watch? Things like this don’t really happen. The universe made a mistake. A fatality wouldn’t occur due to botched demonic surgery on the basement floor of some two-bit drug dealer’s house while a dozen or so people sated their curiosity in place of intervening, right?
"Blemish in mine eyes...the castigation is death, to be permanently banished from all conceivable planes." He lifted the sword overhead in a two-handed, stabbing-downward position. "Now, the necro-energies--"
Things like this don’t really happen, goddamn it.
Every tenet I held regarding substance-corroded minds acquiring edged weapons was dragged by its feet then killed in the three steps I took to stand over the girl’s legs. My interference baffled Mateo, who copied the face he’d make if Metatron arose in full from a bowl of cereal. Lacking a savateur’s finesse but aided by surprise, I knocked over the failed exorcist with a kick to the chest. The gallery became eyes-wide and mouths-open as I picked the girl up off the floor then carried her outside on my shoulder.
"Where are you taking me?" she weakly groaned.
"You’re awake? Fuck you, you’re going to the hospital."
"No no no. It’s fine. This happens when I drink alcohol. Well, not every time."
I kept walking to my car.
"It’s nothing, honestly. Can you put my skirt back so my underwear’s not showing?"
I set her down on the sidewalk. After half a second, she fell on her butt in the grass.
"I can’t go back there. That was fucked up," she said.
I thought about it, and Mike’s wasn’t a good place for me either. Fucking sword-wielding piece of shit.
"Is there anyone you can call?"
"I don’t have anyone’s number." She tore out a handful of grass then sprinkled it on her shoes.
"Well, I can take you home--"
"My boyfriend is mad at me for going out tonight, he’s like, stupidly mad. I can’t go there," she said, whining to the brink of a fully developed cry.
"What is your name?"
"Cayley."
"Cayley, what are you going to do?"
"I need to lie down." After saying this, she fell back, already lightly snoring, her slumber nestled in somebody’s lawn.
"Don’t do that. Hey, don’t do that."
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
All those bunched-up clothes on the couch in my room...would be no more wrinkled on the floor.
